


Nerf This

by silkinsilence



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, I'm Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 01:33:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7554979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkinsilence/pseuds/silkinsilence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hana's thought about dying in the field, of course. She'd be stupid not to have thought about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nerf This

**Author's Note:**

> "What did you do this summer, Natalie?"
> 
> I already regret writing this.

She's not scared.

It's disorienting when the explosion throws the mech through the air, and even with all the protective features in place, the landing still jars her. Her head is spinning, more than a few curses making their way out of her mouth, and she bit her lip, but the prevailing emotion is still only annoyance.

"Talon contact in the west end," she barks into the radio. There's only static on the end. She swears again and supposes maybe the contact broke it. No matter; Ana's covering this area, and she'll undoubtedly have seen the explosion to call it in. Communication down is irritating, but she always has herself to talk to.

Broken radio, unexpected explosion, but she's not scared. She's had worse in training. Hell, she's had worse in games. She's just peeved. They'll regret trying to take down D.Va.

"Okay," she murmurs. "Where's the jackass that hit me?"

She fiddles with the controls to get up on her feet again, but nothing happens. The mech doesn't move. She tries the arms but still gets nothing. The lights on the control panel are all still illuminated, so it's not a power issue. Maybe the fall was worse than she thought.

"썅." She's definitely blaming the suit for this. When they're back at Gibraltar, she'll have to tell Winston she needs repairs or reinforcements or something. Surely she's taken worse knocks than this with the suit still running. What a shoddy piece of shit.

She might be a little worried now, but mostly she's just angrier. Now instead of completing the mission and actually getting to gun down the asshole responsible for her current predicament, she just gets to run back to the transport. There is nothing fun or heroic about that.

She is strictly forbidden from livestreaming Overwatch operations—top-secret missions of international importance, not to be compromised for her "petty desire to appease her fans," as Jack so lovingly puts it. So Hana doesn't livestream them. She's _not_ a child, and she can understand the importance of not throwing their every move on the internet.

But nobody has ever explicitly banned her from _recording_ her missions for potential future screening. Like maybe when she's thirty or so, and everybody's finally realized that Overwatch is out to do the right thing, and Talon is history for good.

So she records, with all the glee and personality she'd put into a livestream anyway. But today, she's thinking right now, is going to make for pretty shitty footage. She's starting to think back to when the explosion happened, what she should have done differently. She didn't even really see anything. Everything always happens so fast.

The taste of blood from her bitten lip is disgusting. She spits, and an ugly splatter of red lands on the console. It makes her feel a little better, even if the taste lingers.

"D.Va again," she says into the radio. It's mostly force of habit, but also hope for a response. "Mech's been compromised. I'm ejecting and heading back to the retreat point."

There isn't even static now. There's just an eerie silence on the other end of the line. It's more than a little unnerving. Well, whatever. She doesn't need a response. She just needs to pull the lever to eject herself. She grabs her blaster from its holster beside her seat and braces to go flying through the air again.

Nothing happens.

She pulls it again. Nothing. And again, still nothing.

Hana realizes, with all the force of another explosion, that she _can't get out._ And then all of the fear and claustrophobia that she hasn't been feeling, that she's _never_ felt before, is crushing her.

Her hands scrabble for the harness. She realizes now that it's quite an uncomfortable position to be pinned in, almost on her stomach, neck craned to look out the cockpit. She can only see a few feet of ground away from her at this angle.

She manages to get all the buckles undone, but even unstrapped there's next to no extra space in the mech. Her fists pound against the cockpit, already knowing it's useless; if bullets can't get through, there's no way a petite nineteen-year-old can.

It's going to be okay. Ana will have seen. Someone will be coming for her. They're Overwatch, and they're a family, and they don't leave people behind. She's been in worse situations. It's been worse before, right? Surely she's been trained for this. Surely something has happened like this in one of the thousands of games she's played before.

But this isn't just a simulation. If the console shuts down during the game, the game is lost. And if the game is lost, then she's—

"Winston! Angela! Ana! Someone, anyone, come in!" Fuck, there are tears on her cheeks. She's hysterical. She thinks she's losing air, though the tiny, rational voice in the back of her mind tells her it's impossible. She isn't thinking about the recording anymore. She's thinking about Talon agents closing in on her. She isn't thinking about how uncool and unheroic it is to punch and kick every surface she can reach in the desperate attempt to find a weak spot in her faithful mech's impenetrable armor.

"Hana Song, isn't it?" There is a lilting voice, French-accented and deadly, in her ear. Amidst the surging panic, Hana remembers her anger.

"미친놈," she snarls.

There is only a laugh in response. "I've found your sniper's little nest. It seems she'll live to run another day. I'm afraid I can't say the same for you, ma chérie. Reaper, she's all yours."

And Reaper has always seemed like something of a joke to Hana, with his leather and his stupid mask and the guns that couldn't take out her mech, but he is seeming much less like that when a pair of black boots walk into view on the other side of the windshield.

She fires her blaster, knowing it's useless, and the bursts of light just fade when they hit the surface. Then his knees are bending, and that horrible owl mask is visible. He's holding a radio up to his own ear. She knows he can't be alone. He's never alone. There must be other Talon agents beyond her tiny field of view. They'll have weapons that can take her down.

She knows, with a sort of serene certainty, that Overwatch isn't manned or equipped for a head-on assault, and that Jack wouldn't let his troops risk their lives anyway.

There's really only one thing left to do.

Suddenly she's wishing she'd got around to playing Mario Kart with Reinhardt like she promised a few weeks ago. The German would have been hilarious, yelling every time he drove off an edge, never giving up or losing his good temper.

That regret grips and holds her as a new voice hisses through the speakers.

"Jack Morrison's recruiting child soldiers now? Pathetic."

"Who are you calling a child?" She glares out at him with all the force she can muster. It's probably not intimidating, not when her face is scrunched up and drenched with tears and snot, but that doesn't matter.

"True enough. When you're on the field, you're just a combatant." He pulls out a shotgun. She doesn't think that can break through the cockpit, not immediately, anyway, but it still makes her flinch.

"엿먹어," she spits.

"I don't speak Korean, niñita," he says, and there's a hint of a chuckle in his voice.

She doesn't bother translating. Instead she pulls off the cover that hides a button on the control panel. A rabbit logo smiles out at her.

"Nerf _this._ "

She slams her fist into the stupid button. In comparison to the rest of this hunk of shit, it responds. She manages a smile as she hears the tell-tale roar of her mech's engines. When it starts vibrating, she wishes she'd stayed strapped in.

She hopes it doesn't hurt.

She can't see fear on Reaper's face, but she can see the way he backs away. Not quickly enough.

Hana thinks of family, her home-family and her Overwatch-family. She thinks, a little wistfully, of all the damn good games she's going to miss out on. Then, as more tears pool in her eyes, she thinks that maybe she managed to be a little heroic after all.

* * *

When her fellows arrive, barely fifteen minutes later, there isn't much left. Scraps of metal litter the crater. The Talon agents who weren't lucky enough to be incinerated instantly are barely recognizable as something once human.

No tell-tale black vapor rises from the wreckage.

Mercy is there, but there is nothing to resurrect. She, and all the others, can do nothing but stare, desperately rejecting what they are seeing. Lena is already sobbing. McCree's face is masklike.

Winston manages to retrieve a hard drive from the mess. Hours later, when he listens to its contents, he will wish he'd left it in the rubble.


End file.
